


Planetary Love

by TheLifeTheFife



Category: Runaways (Comics), Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/F, kind of weird hybrid between comics and tv show, warning: mention of nonconsent, warning: teen pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-28 06:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17177390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLifeTheFife/pseuds/TheLifeTheFife
Summary: Karolina discovers something new about her alien heritage after lying in bed exhausted and nauseous for days. But how will Nico react when she finds out?orPregnant!Karolina AU





	1. Revelation

Karolina rolled over and groaned as the door to her room in the hostel creaked open. “Nico…” She groaned, shoving a pillow over her face. Karolina has felt like shit every morning for the past week. She woke up nearly every day ready to puke her guts out only to want to run back to bed and sleep for another eternity.

            “Hey,” Nico whispered softly, the bed dipping down at her weight. Her soft breathy voice was a least enough for Karolina to peak out from underneath her pillow.

            “Good morning,” she sighed.

            “Ugh,” Nico coughed at the smell. “You already throw up today?”

            “Only once,” Karolina tried to defend. She didn’t understand. This was the weirdest flu she had ever had. The probably-expired medicines they had found in a cabinet in the hostel were doing nothing to help either.

            “I guess that’s an improvement.” Karolina grunted. “Hey, I was talking to Alex yesterday, and he had an idea,” Nico kept stroking Karolina hair and she hummed in contentment. “He was wondering if maybe all this might be from using your powers to much? We have been going kind of hard with the practice this week, and it’s not like you’ve left the hostel to recharge on sunshine much.”        

            Karolina sat up, feeling another wave of nausea roll through her, pausing to let to pass. “It’s possible.”

            “Well, I thought about it, and you’ve been so miserable, I went to the library this morning and snuck out these,” she pulled two thick volumes out of her back, “they don’t have a whole lot on Majesdane, but they have some. I’m on finding food duty today, but I thought maybe you’d want to look through them?”

            Karolina’s heart melted all over again, “You didn’t have to do this.”  


            “I did, if it’s going to make you feel better and stop you from burning out again later, I definitely did.” Nico kissed her forehead, pulling back like she was ready to start some less-innocent kissing, but Karolina forced herself to turn away.

            “You might want to put a hold on that, just in case this really is the flu.”

            “It would be worth it,” Nico purred, and her voice was just husky enough to make Karolina consider it, but she grabbed at the books instead.

            “Nope. I have vomit breath remember.” Nico wrinkled her nose. “Now go get food.”

            “You’re cruel.” Nico rolled off the bed.

            “But you love me!”

            “That I do.” Nico smiled as she creaked the door closed again.

           

Karolina must have fallen back asleep, because when she woke up her arm was splayed across the still-closed library volumes. At least her stomach had managed to whip itself back into some manageable shape.

            Pulling her legs beneath her she pulled the first book to her. _An Encyclopedia of Alien Races_. Still, there was only a tiny footnote on Majesdane shoved under another article that revealed nothing she didn’t already know. She groaned and threw it to the other side of the bed.  

            Checking the index of _Aliens of the Milky Way and Their Relations to Earth_ , Karolina squinted at the small font. Alex has a freaking super computer downstairs and we can’t even connect the freaking thing to the internet, Karolina thought bitterly. How much a Google search could make all of this so much easier.

            At least this book had a two-page spread on Majesdanians. Karolina skimmed over the first page. Nothing but a dry explanation that “Majesdanians may exhibit certain special powers when faced with the Earth’s yellow sun,” like she didn’t already know that. The second pages turned out to be more interesting. It mentioned how, due to some chemical composition in the Majesdanian atmosphere, Majesdanians were nearly impervious to Earth’s diseases. Thinking on it, Karolina never had been sick past a mild cold when she was younger. Still, the “nearly” didn’t rule out the possibility of a flu.

            Karolina was just about to close the book and go see if Nico had come back to with the food when she met the small subheading “Reproduction” when something caught her eye.

           

 

> Though Majesdanian reproduction is very similar to humans’, it differs in one remarkable aspect. While Majesdanians can become pregnant through sexual intercourse, Majesdanian women may be impregnated through oral saliva exchange (often through osculation or kissing). According to Majesdanian legend, such a thing may only occur if the two partners are deeply emotionally linked as the brain chemicals change when experiencing such intense love, allowing the fertilization to proceed. Additionally, this form of fertilization has been recording between same-sex partners. However, little is still known about the details of such legends and much has not been confirmed by human scientists.

 

            Karolina’s heart beat rapidly in her chest, and all her nausea came rushing back in full force. She didn’t even have time to turn over to the bucket lying beside the bed before upchucking onto the floor.

 

Karolina threw on her clothes with a speed she hadn’t had for a week. She needed to go. Go somewhere. Get out of this room. Get away from that book. She was racing down the stairs before she had even remembered to brush the smell out of her mouth and whizzing out of the hostel.             She vaguely heard Molly call after her, and someone ask if they should go after her, but they didn’t think they would.

            Slowing down and her adrenaline faded away, she headed to the one place she could think of, a drug store. It wasn’t hard to find the aisle with the neatly stacked pink boxes with flowery cartoons on their sides. Karolina knew with the level of junk lying around the hostel, if she dug hard enough, she could probably find one of these in some corner somewhere, but she wasn’t taking a risk on some molded over, expired thing on this. She shoved the box under her jacket, only taking it out so the smirking cashier could ring it up, before shoving it back into her pocket.

            She couldn’t help her breathing coming fast she trekked across the parking lot to the gas station and its bathroom on the other side. She felt like every head was turned towards she and she prayed her blushing cheeks could be passed off as too much time in the California sun.

            The bathroom stank of old cigarettes and worse, as she closed the door behind her, but Karolina couldn’t even think of waiting until she got back to the hostel to do this. So she waited, bent over the disgusting sink, not even having the brain power left to pray for a check or a minus or whatever it was supposed to be.

            Not until a little blue plus appeared on the stark white stick.


	2. Knowing

Karolina wrapped herself in as many blankets as she could find. She knew it was room in the room. She knew she shouldn’t be this cold. She knew objectively that this might be a sign of shock, but she couldn’t do anything to stop it either. All she could do was wait, feeling like a stone was in her stomach where a new baby was forming.

            Nico opened the door even more tentatively than she had that morning. “Hey, Gert mentioned you looked pretty upset earlier. Are you okay?”

            Karolina swallowed, tried to make words come out of her mouth, but just shook her head.

            Nico came to sit beside her, “I found some chocolate. I thought it might make you feel better?” Karolina just looked at the Hersey’s bar, not taking it from her. “Is this about something in the books? Are you feeling okay?”

            “I—” Karolina started, sighing as she fell into Nico’s arms. She wanted nothing more to stay in this embrace for the rest of time, to ignore what was growing inside her. She let herself breathe in the warm sent of Nico’s hair, her chest rattling as the tears started to come. “I need to tell you something, and I need you to listen to the whole thing.”

            “Hey,” Nico whispered, concern etched into her face. “It’s okay, you’re okay, what’s wrong?”

            “I’m pregnant.” She felt the words drop like a ten-ton anvil between them. “The morning sickness, the exhaustion, it’s not the flu.” Karolina rested her hand on her still-flat stomach.

            Nico was frozen, her muscles stone-stiff under Karolina’s fingers as she went on. “I didn’t figure it out until I was reading those books you brought me and it said Majesdani—”

            “Were you—who’s—how far are you?”

            “I’m not sure, but probably not more than three months?” Karolina guessed. “With the morning sickness, that’s usually an early symptom and I’m not showing yet and my period—”

            “We were dating then. We had been dating for two months by then.” Nico stated, flat and monotone. She wouldn’t look at Karolina’s face, wouldn’t take her eyes off her abdomen.

            “I know, Nico, but you promised you would listen to everything first, please Nico, it’s not what you think!” Karolina sobbed. This was all too much.

            Nico’s eyes snapped to hers, “Were you forced? Did he—did someone make you—” _I am going to hunt down whoever dared touch her. I am going to watch them bleed to death. I am—_

            “No!” Karolina shouted, and Nico felt relief wash over her in the same time anger welled up inside of her like a growing tsunami.

            “Then who’s Karolina?” Nico got up from the bed, screaming so loud her throat hurt. “Who’s! Who’s baby is it? Because I know we’ve fought, but how could you—how could you cheat on me? What is wrong with you?” Her tears were blurring her vision, but she couldn’t stop yelling, barely making sense even to herself. “Who’s! Who’s! Who’s!” She had to know. She had to know who had taken her place when she wasn’t good enough.

            “It’s yours.” Karolina whispered. “Please, this is why I told you to listen, it’s in those books you brought me. The Majesdanians, we can—I don’t understand it, but it’s yours, Nico.”

            “Nice try, Karolina, but I’m a high school dropout not an idiot.” Nico felt like every bone in her body was about to shatter. “You can’t even tell me.” She looked at her with wide eyes, this woman who she thought was her everything—who was her everything—but apparently Nico wasn’t the same to her.

            “Nico, please—” Karolina begged, her voice cracking as she reached to grab Nico’s hand, but Nico pulled away.

            “Get away from me.” She growled, and then did something she had never thought she was capable of. She turned on her heal, away from the woman she loved, crying on the floor, and marched out of the room.

           

Nico ran through the hostel without knowing where she was going. She needed to get away.

           She ended up in a room she hadn’t been in before, the walls piled high with junk. She picked up the first thing she set her hands on, a rusted-out soup can and threw it with all her strength at the opposite wall, causing a satisfying avalanche of boxes to crash to the floor.

           She screamed, wordless pain ripping from her throat. How could this happen? How could she let this happen? Was it a one-time thing or was Karolina still seeing this guy behind her back? Was it someone she knew? Was it Alex or Chase? _Please don’t let it be one of them._

           Nico crumpled in a heap on the floor. Dirt and dust floated up in a cloud above her, making her cough, but she couldn’t even bring herself to care. She wanted to be mad. And she was mad. At Karolina, but mostly at herself.   
            Nico had let this happen. She hadn’t been there. She hadn’t been enough. She tried to think back. Three months ago. That would be right before she killed Jonah. Was that what drove Karolina away, in those days when she had hated the very sight of her?

           Nico didn’t know. She needed to know. Why couldn’t have Karolina just told her who, why? Nico knew she never deserved someone as kind and selfless and beautiful as Karolina, but she never imagined that this, _this_ would be what would come of it.

            Nico picked up another can and threw it, this one biting into her skin as she did so. She stared down at her own blood, just a thin trickle, but she didn’t move to clean it up.

            Instead, she rolled onto her back and stared at the cracked and molded ceiling. She wanted to be numb. She didn’t want to think, but she couldn’t stop her mind from racing. What was she going to do? If Karolina would still have her, could she go back, knowing she had cheated? Could she still be there when Karolina had some man’s child? _That is, if she keeps it._

            She didn’t know. She wanted to think that she could go back, that they could fix this. She didn’t know how to live without her anymore. She hadn’t felt as happy as she had with Karolina ever in her life, and now…was it over?

            _Look at me, what a good little Icarus._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally got out of most of the exposition. I hope you guys liked it! Please comment, they're what keep me writing!


	3. Chapter 3

Karolina had no more tears left in her, yet she still couldn’t stop herself from wincing at the echoes of Nico’s rage down the hall. She knew she could go in there and explain, clear everything up, but between the physical exhaustion thanks to the new little discovery and the emotional exhaustion weighing in on her, she couldn’t bring herself to move. She’ll come back, and then we’ll figure this out together.

            There was a soft knock on her doorframe, and Karolina’s head whipped up. Nico. But, no, it was Chase.

            “Hey are you okay? I heard yelling and then Nico…” he trailed off, a dim crash clattering through the room.

            “I told Nico I was pregnant.” She couldn’t be bothered to beat around the bush.

            Chase’s eyes widened. “Wasn’t expecting that.” Then he paused. “Are you?” Karolina just nodded her head. “Who…?”

            “Nico.” Chase’s brows scrunched together so she just scooted the open book towards him, pointing to the small paragraph at the end. Normally, she would be bashful showing one of her closest guy friends a passage explaining the inner-workings of her uterus, but now she couldn’t be bothered. There were bigger things she was going to have to get used to. Or, rather, smaller things, as it was.

            Chase skimmed over the paragraph, her mouth puckering at some of the confusing scientific jargon. “Yikes.”

            “Yeah,” was all Karolina could sigh. What else was there more to say?  
            “And Nico doesn’t want it?” He asked tentatively, so soft like he wasn’t sure it was okay to ask.

            “She doesn’t believe it’s hers. I dropped the bomb, but then she wouldn’t listen long enough to let me explain.” Karolina ended in a growl, letting out more anger than she knew she had. But she was confused and panicked, and she needed the one person who never failed to make her happier and she wasn’t there because she was too bull-headed to listen and save them both a lot of pain.

            “Hey,” Chase squeezed her knee, “She’ll calm down in a little bit. You’ll get this all worked out.”

            “Thank you,” Karolina swallowed, letting herself fall into his arms. They weren’t the soft embrace she had become so used to, but they were strong, and comfortable, and there, and right now that was what she needed.

            Chase rocked her back and forth in his arms and Karolina didn’t know how long she was there or if she had dozed off or not, because she didn’t open her eyes until she heard the door to the room slam shut.

            Karolina jumped, falling out of Chase’s arms.

            “So it’s his?!” Nico roared. Her eyes were puffy, and her fingers streaked red with—was that blood? “I come in here to talk—to figure things out and you’re already back in his arms?”

            “Nico!” Karolina shouted right back. They weren’t going to get anywhere if she just let Nico keep drawing her own conclusions.

            “Come on Nico, it’s not what you think.” Chase tried to reason, gently moving towards her like she was a scared doe, ready to flee.

            “So, you didn’t knock up my girlfriend?” Nico scoffed. “I’d like to know who did if it wasn’t the man I found cradling her in his arms.”

            “I was you Nico!” What would it take to get that through her head? Was she really so desperate not to believe it?

            “I know you’re not the brightest of the pack, Chase, but I thought you at least understood the birds and the bees. Or was that metaphor even too hard for you to grasp?”

            Chase didn’t let himself wince at the insult, but Karolina still rose to stand next to him. “Nico, you’re hurt, I get that, but you can’t just go around and bully all our friends.”     

            “Is he really my friend?” The Staff of One shook in Nico’s hand. She may have tried to appear all stoic, but she gave herself away.

            “Nico, please,” Karolina’s voice broke. “I can’t make it more clear. It’s your baby. It’s with the alien biology, it makes things…” she trailed off. Complicated? Different? Just flat out confusing? “Happen,” she finished lamely.

            Nico shifted on her feet, clutching the Staff of One tighter so it stopped quivering. She didn’t say anything, but she wasn’t crying and she wasn’t raging, so Karolina went on, forcing the words out as fast as she could if only so Nico would hear them all before making up some story that made more sense to her. “The books you brought from the library. I was looking for Majesdanian illnesses, but they had a section on reproduction, and it mentioned that—” her face heated with Chase in the room, but now wasn’t the time for bashfulness “um, I guess Frenching—they said it with more sciencey words—but Frenching can be enough to cause” she waved a hand over her abdomen “in Majesdanians.”

            Nico’s shoulder’s slumped, but she didn’t let her guard down completely. “It’s not yours?” She didn’t yell this time, just glared at Chase.

            “No! I would never!” He seemed to catch himself. “Not that I—I mean I would—I just meant—no offense?”

            Karolina smiled dimly, “None taken.” She reached out her hand for Nico. “You’re a mamma-to-be.”

            Nico quivered as she stepped to Karolina, her eyes flitting from her eyes to the white cotton of her t-shirt. Finally, she flopped into her arms. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I should have listened. I’m sorry.” Nico didn’t know she had any sobs left in her, but she let them loose and she breathed into Karolina’s shoulder.

            Karolina hushed her, stroking her hair. “Shh. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

            They finally broke apart at the sound of Gert’s voice. “Hey are you guys all right? Why are you all screaming?” She took in Nico and Karolina’s tear-stained faces. “Is everything okay?”

            “Yup.” Chase popped the p. “I was just explaining to Nico here how I am not the father of her girlfriend’s unborn child.”

            Gert choked, and Karolina couldn’t help but laugh. Nico didn’t seem as amused, but even she couldn’t help a little watery smirk as Karolina poked her in the side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading! I love seeing all your comments, then make me so happy!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! Please leave comments and let me know if I should keep going! Thanks for reading!


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